


nostalgia

by Syrasha



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Christmas, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 03:21:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5523539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syrasha/pseuds/Syrasha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It doesn’t snow like it used to anymore, Nora thinks, and everyone here talks about Christmas as history rather than a holiday.</p>
            </blockquote>





	nostalgia

It doesn’t snow like it used to anymore, Nora thinks, and everyone here talks about Christmas as history rather than a holiday. Even though she doesn’t expect them to understand, somehow it still hurts, and the fact that there’s no snow on the ground in Massachussetts in December makes her feel even more alienated than usual. There’s snow sometimes, but it never accumulates, and it’s radioactive anyhow so no accumulation is probably for the best.

The Woman Out of Time, bested by the holiday season. Who would have guessed?

She’s gotten over being nostalgic about the past for the most part, but Nora has always been festive. Her festiveness was part of the reason she met Nate, for Christ’s sakes, walking home late from the bar where she worked because she’d stayed over to hang up lights.

Hancock tries to understand. He’s her best friend, and he really does try, and it’s more than she even has the right to ask for in this world, but it tears her up that she’ll never open or wrap another gift or taste cranberry sauce. Piper tries too, and so does Nick, but nobody gets it. That’s why it makes no sense when she finds a gift the morning of the 25th.

Nora wakes up alone and reaches for Nate like she still can’t help doing after all these years, and instead she finds a tiny box, wrapped terribly in what looks like newspaper which had been used to clean up blood. She rubs the sleep from her eyes and blinks twice, rising from the dingy mattress and picking the small thing up. When Nora opens it, there is no word to describe her but shocked; a tube of mascara from a million years ago, never opened, a brand she always used to buy pre-war.

That’s only the beginning. Nora finds these gifts scattered everywhere she turns on her daily routine, underneath her work bench, nestled in the helmet of her power armor, all reminders of her life before the bombs, before the vault, before her life fell apart and she had to piece it back together.

Nora glows all day, and everyone notices, chipper from the moment she found the first gift upon waking.

“What’s got you shining like that, Blue?” Piper asks, and Nora gives the hugest grin she can muster.

“The season, Piper. The season.” Piper rolls her eyes at Nora’s answer, but smiles in return, and glances over at where Hancock is whispering something to Nick a few meters away, the ghoul with a conspiratorial grin on his face.

When the day ends, she has an armful of nostalgia: makeup, jewelry, a softball that she’d gotten her senior year of high school. Nora wishes everyone good night and walks towards home, the same home as it was over two hundred years ago because she can’t bear leaving the only things she has left of Shaun and Nate.

She’s halfway through taking her shirt off when she hears a knock on the door. Nora quickly slips it back on, and comes face to face with Hancock, whose hands are behinds his back.

Nora grins at him. “Evening, Hancock. What can I do for you?”

He smirks like he always does. “Well, you could do plenty for me.” Nora rolls her eyes, used to his good-natured ribbing, and he continues. “I’m here to do something for you, though.” His hands come from behind his back with a last, horrendously wrapped package, larger than most of the others, and Nora’s eyes widen.

“It’s been you all day?” Nora’s voice is close to a whisper. Hancock nods, almost sheepishly, and she takes the present with trembling hands.

“Merry Christmas, sunshine.” He’s never called her sunshine before. He’s called her sweetheart, and dear, and doll, but never sunshine. Nora’s fingers shake as she opens it, and her knees go weak once she finally sees what’s inside.

“Hancock… where did you find all of this?” Her voice is still, but that’s the only part of her that is. Hancock feels that when she takes his hand to pull him inside the dilapidated building, one everyone knows is off-limits because that’s Nora’s place. Nora takes one last look at the picture before setting it on the floor next to the mattress she’s sat down on, so she can wake up to a picture of Shaun every morning if she wants to.

He’s a little uncomfortable because as far as he knows there’s no one else who has been in here. It’s nearly empty, of course, but this is Nora’s private space, where she can get away from the fact that this isn’t the world that she had left behind two hundred and some years ago. Hancock clears his throat. “I didn’t go to Goodneighbor a few days ago, when I told you I would. I mean, I did, but not at first. I went back to Vault 111.” Nora takes in a breath sharply, and briefly, Hancock wonders if even that was an invasion of her space, but he plows on. “I found a… room. It was more like a closet, I guess, filled with boxes of possessions of the Vault dwellers that had lived there. It was a sick experiment they did, but it looked like, at least in the beginning, they had planned to let you go. You had been talking about Christmas for last couple of weeks, and I still don’t really get it, but this seemed like the kind of thing it would be about. So I pillaged your vault for what remained of your pre-war belongings. I guess you could call me a romantic.”

Nora doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry, and in the end she does a little of both, and Hancock doesn’t know what to say. When he brushes her shoulder to comfort her, Nora leans into him, and it seems like she’s there forever before she starts speaking.

She doesn’t say what he thinks she’s going to say. In fact, it isn’t even in the ballpark.

“You want to lie down and stay a bit? I’ll explain all about Christmas, and next year, you won’t have to tackle it all on your own. We’ll make Sanctuary the most festive place in all of the Commonwealth."

So he lies down next to her on the shitty mattress, and she takes his hat to fiddle with nervously while she talks to him about things she hasn’t told anyone since she woke up. Pine trees, and multicolored lights, and ham and turkey and mistletoe, she says, are all essential to the Christmas experience.

“Should I be taking notes?” Hancock asks, only half in jest, but when she laughs it’s so beautiful that he almost forgets how terrible the godforsaken world is, so he’ll say it was a joke if she asks.

Finally, Nora almost talks herself to sleep, regaling him with tales of childhood Christmases and plans she had had with Nate for their next one before he was killed. Her eyes start fluttering shut, and Hancock half-smiles at her, sitting up to leave when she grabs his arm and kisses his wrist before pulling him gently back down.

“Don’t go,” she says, and at first he isn’t sure if she’s really still awake, but then she says, “No one has ever listened to me talk this much about Christmas before.”

So he lies down again, in the same spot as he was before, but Nora won’t let go of his arm except to hold his hand instead. Hancock gingerly kisses her on the forehead, testing the waters, and Nora’s eyes lazily open just long enough to plant a kiss where his lips used to be.

"Merry Christmas, John. Next year we'll really knock them dead."

**Author's Note:**

> merry christmas everybody!!!! xoxo


End file.
